Phillip Tobias

Wednesday evening, this past week, found me in Adams Bookshop for the launch of Professor Phillip Tobias’ book Into the Past – A Memoir.

Professor Tobias grew up in Durban and attended Durban High School but has spent his adult in Johannesburg as a lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand. But this is far too modest a title for a great scholar who admits to having ‘dabbled’ in anatomy, genetics, anthropology, history, philosophy, human evolution, politics, religion and theology. He is currently Professor Emeritus of Anatomy and Human Biology at the University and holds the positions of Honorary Professor of Palaeo-anthropology, Honorary Professorial Research Associate and Director of the Sterkfontein Research Unit. He is also the Andrew Dickson White Professor-at-Large of Cornell University.

I believe that he has been nominated for a Nobel Prize more than once but have yet to confirm this. I remember him as a partner to Professor Arthur Blexley on a radio programme 35 years ago as they answered listener’s questions on matters scientific. More recently he carried out protracted negotiations with the French Government to have the remains of Sarah Baartman* returned to South Africa for burial. These negotiations were eventually successful and she was buried near Hankey in the Eastern Cape on Women’s’ Day, 9 August, 2002.

Others will know Phillip Tobias from the recent television series Tobias’ Bodies in which he explored human development from the fossil record up until today.

A great scholar, scientist, researcher, lecturer and successor to Raymond Dart and Robert Broom; a man who has added to the sum of human knowledge about our present and past; a truly great South African.

Of course I bought his book and asked him to sign it.

*A Khoe-San woman who was taken to Europe to be exhibited as the ‘African Venus’. After her death her skeleton was preserved as were her brain and external genitalia. These were, at times, on display at the Museum National in Paris